An international team of entomologists from Brazil and the United States has described a new species of tiny insect.
The newly discovered forcepfly Austromerope brasiliensis (Renato Jose Pires Machado et al)
Forcepflies are usually known as earwigflies, because the males have a large genital forceps that resembles the cerci of earwigs.
The newly found species, called Austromerope brasiliensis, belongs to the family Meropeidae. It represents only the 3rd extant species described in this family and the 1st record of the family from the Neotropical region.
The distribution and biogeography of the family are discussed and it is even proposed that Meropeidae originated before continental drift and then divided into two branches, northern and southern, with the breakup of the old supercontinent Pangea.
Despite all previous collecting efforts in this area the species had never been recorded before. The specimen was collected in a private ranch near a forest fragment surrounded by farms in the Atlantic Forest biome, one of the most threatened in Brazil. It can be found in a variety of habitats, including woodland, Jarrah forest, and sand plain vegetation.
What makes forcepflies special is the fact that little is known about their biology and the immature stages remain a mystery to scientists. The adults, who are nocturnal and seem to live on the ground, are also capable of stridulation, or the production of sound by rubbing certain body parts.
“The discovery of this new relict species is an important signal to reinforce the conservation of Brazilian Atlantic Forest biome. Certainly there are many more mecopterans species yet to be discovered in these forests,” said Dr Renato Machado of the Texas A & M University, lead author of a paper describing the new species in the open access journal ZooKeys.
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Bibliographic information: Renato Jose Pires Machado et al. 2013. New continental record and new species of Austromerope (Mecoptera, Meropeidae) from Brazil. ZooKeys 269: 51–65; doi: 10.3897/zookeys.269.4255
